100km Foods Chef Profile – Lora Kirk, Ruby Watchco

For the next installment in our Chef ambassador
series, we sat down with Chef Lora Kirk. Lora is chef & co-owner of Ruby
Watchco in Toronto. Chef Lora has an impressive culinary resume, having worked
as a chef internationally for over fifteen years – including working with
Gordon Ramsey and Angela Hartnett at the Connaught Hotel!

Lora is another amazing local food advocate who has a
long history and strong relationship with 100km Foods. She and her wife, Lynn,
opened Ruby Watchco ten years ago and have been sourcing through 100km since its
opening. For Lora, she was drawn to pursue a career as a chef in part because
of her profound connection to food and the land through her family. Lora’s
parents had a hobby farm, and her grandparents were farmers just outside of
Peterborough, ON. From a young age, they instilled within Lora a love and
appreciation of being in nature, harvesting food, and cooking meals from
scratch using ingredients they grew themselves. Having grown up with such an
intimate familiarity with all things food, it was a really natural fit for Lora
to become a chef.

There are two things that keep Lora passionate and
motivated in her career as a chef: sharing in the joy and delight as her
daughters, Addie Pepper and Gemma Jet, try different foods for the first time.
And the other: working with great farmers and growers. As Lora says,
‘surrounding yourself with good people (…) pushes you forward.’

As mentioned, Lora has been sourcing through 100km
Foods for almost as long as 100km has existed. Lora appreciates that 100km does
‘a lot of the leg work for you.’ The legitimacy 100km Foods offers (since we
are able to connect with the farmers directly and guarantee the products are
local) provides the comfort and safety of knowing with certainty you’re getting
what you think you’re getting. 100km Foods also partners with farms who not
only have great stories, but also grow great products. For Lora, these
connections continuously inspire her to craft something spectacular with the
ingredients.

Sourcing local, planning seasonal

We were really eager to pick Lora’s brain about
sourcing local and planning seasonal menus. She encourages chefs to think
deeply about what you want to cook with, and why. She likens being a chef
nowadays to being a kid in a candy store – you can order ‘anything, from
anybody, from anywhere. That doesn’t mean the quality is going to be the
greatest.’ For Lora, she prioritizes sourcing locally, because then she knows
where the product is coming from and because ‘if I’m going to support someone,
I want to support someone in my community.’ Back when Lora and Lynn were
opening Ruby Watchco, they chose to prioritize local because it made sense with
their decision to frequently change the menu. They didn’t do it to be trendy:
they did it because they intuitively understood that the relationship building
fostered through sourcing from local farms nurtures a small restaurant
business. However, she emphasizes that there needs to be a level of legitimacy
behind it and the quality of ingredient that she looks for. Simply branding
something ‘local’ isn’t enough.

She has two other crucial points to make. First, once
that product is in your door, you need to ‘use every last peeling’ and be smart
about how you use it, store it, and plan with it. Second, ‘good chefs are good
problem solvers,’ so she urges other chefs to pay attention to how the growing
season is progressing. Some years will be great for certain kinds of crops, and
some years won’t. If you pay attention to how the season is trending, you can
push yourself to be creative when things may not go as planned. Like the other
chefs we’ve spoken to, Lora cites the seasonality calendar as a useful tool, as
well as the new growing forecast emails we send out monthly. This proactive
information we provide is something other suppliers are unlikely to do, where
the best you’ll get when you ask if a product is available is simply, ‘no.’

There’s something special about Fogo Island Cod

When we turned to some of Lora’s favourite products
she sources, and she said her current favourite is the hand-line caught cod
from Fogo Island Fish. For those who may not know, Lora was able to spend time
in Fogo Island with Tony and Janice and has gone out to catch the cod with the
fishers – which
you can read about here. The product is great, and the story is so special.
Her other favourites include The New Farm greens. These greens are more than
just greens. Lora says they are also extraordinary because of the work Brent
and Gil are doing and how they’re changing agriculture to adapt to climate
change. She also loves carrots from Gwillimdale Farms, saying they sometimes
‘can be the sweetest carrots I’ve ever had.’

We asked Lora her favourite meals to cook. Her answer
was straight the to the point: ‘anything with eggs!’. Lora and Lynn both are
big egg eaters at home, and that’s also one of Addie Pepper’s favourites (she
may be young but she’s already learning to crack eggs one handed!). Poached,
scrambled, omelette, you name it, they love it. Another one of her favourite
late-night meals is pasta, bacon and scrambled eggs with hot sauce. Lora also
loves working with the espelette peppers from St. David’s, and always makes
time to smoke them and make a huge batch of hot sauce.

Who would Lora share a meal with?

Now, the question that has stumped everyone thus far –
who would Lora eat with, dead or alive? After much deliberation, Lora settled
on a very beautiful answer: her great-grandmother and her babka (grandma). She
only was able to meet her great-grandmother once when she was thirteen, and
because of the second world war, her babka was separated from her
great-grandmother at a very young age. Lora’s babka is a fantastic cook, and so
was her great-grandmother, so she would love to sit down with them to share a
dinner, three generations of women who made magic with food.

If Lora wasn’t a chef, she thinks she would have gone
either one of two ways: back to her roots as a farmer (probably raising ducks,
chickens or rabbits, which is what her parents raised) or a photographer. That
being said, Lora loves what she does as a chef. She considers herself a giving
person and wants to pay forward the care and dedication that the farmers showed
by growing these products in a way that resonates with diners. There are many
who come to Ruby Watchco who want to learn, and having a great team that is
knowledgeable, passionate and excited to share with diners is just one way to
realize Lora’s vision.

We had a wonderful time sitting down with Lora (and
meeting the newest addition to their family, baby Gemma Jet!). Lora has a lot
of wisdom and expertise born from her own family history and her extensive
culinary experience, and we feel truly lucky to have had such excellent support
from her over the years. She is an amazing champion and advocate of the local
food movement, and it was an absolute no-brainer to have her be part of our
fantastic ambassadors!